Our new paper, authored by former lab technician Olivia Anastasio and lab alum Chelsea Sinclair ('21), has been published in Evolution. Males of many species, including fruit flies, invest more reproductive resources when they mate with high-quality females, a process known as "cryptic male mate choice". In this paper, we show that this increased male investment in high-quality females reduces their paternity success in their future matings! This cost can limits male reproductive potential over their lifetime. Also see Barnard's news piece on our paper!

Congratulations to lab alums Abigail Gutierrez (BC 2020) and Chelsea Sinclair (BC 2021) who returned to campus today for a much-delayed, long-overdue in person graduation ceremony! It was so wonderful to see them and FINALLY be able to celebrate their accomplishments in person. 

Our new paper, authored by lab alums Chelsea Sinclair ('21) and Suriya Lisa ('19), has been published in Ecology and Evolution. In this paper, we show that sexually inexperienced males prefer to court larger females over smaller females, and that the strength of this preference was unaffected by previous experience mating with, or being rejected by, small or large females. Also check out Barnard's news piece on our paper!

Congratulations to Chelsea, who presented her senior thesis work at the (Zoom) Neuroscience and Behavior Symposium today! 

Chelsea Sinclair has been featured in a series of promotional videos put out by the Barnard Annual Fund! Watch closely to see a cameo appearance by members of the Pischedda Lab (from a lab meeting)!

Congratulations to Chelsea Sinclair for receiving the Charles H. Turner Award from the Animal Behavior Society! This award typically provides travel and accommodation to the ABS conference for undergraduate students, along with mentorship workshops and lunches. Because the ABS 2020 Meeting is being held virtually this year, Chelsea will attend the meeting remotely and participate in mentorship and professional development actives. Yay Chelsea!! (Update 7/29: Click here to see the ABS's profile of Chelsea on Twitter)

COVID-19 might have moved us all off campus and moved our flies into my garage, but the Pischedda Lab is still meeting for semi-regular lab meetings! This week's agenda: watching Abby and Ana-Maria practice a run-through of their poster presentations for the upcoming Biology Symposium, and getting an updated lab photo (even if it needed to be via Zoom!)

The lab went out for lunch to celebrating the end of SRI: 10 weeks that have been filled with successes, failures, so much science, and so many flies!

Abby, Ana-Maria and Chelsea presented their summer research today at Barnard's Summer Research Institute (SRI) Poster Session!